Schwartz: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal [LWN.net]

Perhaps we should welcome the patent trolls?

Posted Mar 10, 2010 18:22 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

Perhaps we should welcome the patent trolls? Contrary to what most people think, traditionally patents have not really been money makers for most companies. But, they are defended strongly by large businesses because they are effective weapons against new small startup businesses. Bring patent trolls into the mix, and now patents (not just software patents) are becoming a nuisance to large corporations also. The larger the nuisance, the less large companies will defend the idea of patents, and eventually in the long term, perhaps we could see their abandon... "Bring on the patent trolls!"?

Doesn't seem to work like that

Posted Mar 10, 2010 18:41 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Sounds plausible, but, the opposite is happening.

Trolls have been a problem for years, and the megacorps (bar Sun) still love software patents. Some megacorps that were strongly against software patents in 1994 (when the USPTO held a bunch of hearings) are lobbying *for* software patents.

Oracle's 1994 anti-swpat position is one example. There are more on this site but I can't find the page right now.

I've made a place-holder page on the en.swpat.org wiki just now, and I'll fill in the info later tonight:
1994 USPTO software patent hearings

Some people also welcomed TRIPS because they thought it was such as disaster, it would never be let happen ever again. And now we're watching ACTA happening without any problems or concern for the public interest.

Doesn't seem to work like that

Posted Mar 10, 2010 18:59 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

Perhaps the patent trolls simply aren't a big enough problem yet. In other words, as software companies are growing, there are now bigger software companies than in 1994, and naturally: the patent weapon against smaller companies is simply becoming more useful. If the patent troll pain is not growing proportionally more than this "utility" than, it follows that patents will still be seen in good light for larger companies. Do you have any evidence that this patent troll pain is indeed growing as fast as the larger companies' utility of patents as a weapon is growing? If not, I am not quite sure you can say that "the opposite is happening", unless you are merely responding to this small part of my post: "perhaps we could see their abandon"...

Doesn't seem to work like that

Posted Mar 10, 2010 19:30 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

PriceWaterHouseCoopers recently did a patent litigation study.
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/forensic-services/publications/a...

A few of the conclusions:
* Non-practicing Entities (also known as trolls) are having an increasing impact.
* Damages awards for NPEs have averaged more than double those for practicing entities since 1995.
* Juries tend to find in favor of the patent holder much more often than judges.
* The "reasonable royalties" metric is usually used to calculate damages, rather than "lost profits."

The report also goes on to say:
> High-tech software and telecommunications companies may embed hundreds of
> patented components within their products; thus, they welcome changes to
> current patent law. However, major pharmaceutical companies, biotech
> companies, and NPEs, who typically have a smaller number of patents
> covering their products, prefer the status quo.

There's no details about what changes, exactly, the software companies were pushing for in the 2009 Patent Reform Act. I doubt that the companies wanted to abolish software patents completely, but they may well have wanted to abolish some of the more egregious abuses.